Blizzard on Artifact Power Changes in Patch 7.2

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas explains the goals of Artifact Power, missteps in Legion and some upcoming changes in Patch 7.2 to the system.\r\rThere were two goals for Artifact Power - to serve as a consistent reward from multiple types of content, while also allowing max-level players a form of progression with some customization. Blizzard identified two missteps and suggested solutions coming in Patch 7.2.\r\rIssue 1:\rMisstep: The cost of "Paragon" traits which provided damage and stamina boosts did not scale exponentially and instead had flat costs, which led to a large power gap and trait disparity among players and caused stress and social pressure in raid groups.\rPatch 7.2 change: Change the high-tier traits to scale exponentially in cost, to reduce the power gap among players. Boost Artifact Knowledge to be a better catch-up mechanism.\r\rIssue 2:\rMisstep: Having certain forms of content, like Maw of Souls, be so appealing for Artifact Power over time-limited forms of content like raiding.\rPatch 7.2 change: Adding a significant amount of Artifact Power to the weekly Mythic + reward, and diminishing the amount rewarded from repeated runs. A hotfix also went live for Nighthold bosses to reward AP.\r\rAlso of note in Patch 7.2: the 20 point "paragon" trait's power will be split between the 35th and 36th point traits. For example, the 35th trait for Havoc Demon Hunters will be Quemadura de caos for 5% damage, and the 36th trait will be Ferocidad Illidari for 10% damage and stamina. There will be several new empowered traits, as well as Rank 4 options on old three-point traits, which you can browse in the PTR Artifact Calculator.\r\r\rArtifact Power has been a hot topic lately, both around the community and within the development team. With Patch 7.2 on the horizon, introducing both new artifact traits and additional Knowledge levels, we have been reflecting on the way the system has unfolded during the first months of Legion, and evaluating changes based on the lessons we have learned thus far.\r\rFirst off, a look back at where we started.\r\rFrom the outset, Artifact Power was intended to serve two intertwined purposes: First, it offered max-level progression that was not entirely item-driven, along with choices and elements of character customization as players traversed their trait trees; second, it was meant to serve as a universally desired, consistent reward from all types of content.\r\rIn crafting the systems that delivered Artifact Power, we weighed the merits of hard caps versus a smoother system of diminishing returns. We had extensive experience with hard caps, through multiple past iterations of currencies like Valor Points and Conquest Points, and wanted to avoid several of the downsides of that approach. For example, a cap inherently feels like more of an expected quota, where missing a week or falling short of the cap puts you clearly, and potentially permanently, behind the curve. \r\rInstead, as everyone knows, we settled on an open-ended system of diminishing returns. Without any hard caps on how quickly players could earn AP, it was essential to have some sort of limiting mechanism on the gap in power between players of different playstyles, and different levels of time investment. We accepted the admittedly complex design of Artifact Knowledge because it solved this problem, effectively reining in the size of this power gap. Players trying to progress past the expected artifact level for their Knowledge would run into those rapidly diminishing returns, while those who played less than that would have Knowledge as an accelerator to help them catch up to the cutting edge. When Emerald Nightmare was new content, while the average raider was at 20 or 21 points, the most dedicated might have been at 24 or 25 \u2013 a relatively modest gap.\r\rNow, where things went wrong\u2026\r\rWe feel that we made two major missteps with the Artifact Power system that increasingly manifested themselves as we got deeper into Patch 7.1 and 7.1.5. And both of them served to undermine that core goal of ensuring that the gap between players with different levels of time invested into the system could not grow too large. \r\rFirst, the cost of ranks in the 20-point final trait remained relatively flat, as opposed to the rapid exponential scaling up to that point. This meant that someone who spent twice as much time gathering AP as I did would have roughly twice as many ranks as me. Instead of the 24 vs. 21 gaps we saw in Nightmare, a number of hardcore raiders entered Nighthold with 54 points, while others were just beginning that final progression and found themselves with nearly 10% less health and damage, equivalent to being almost a full tier of gear behind. Players who switched specs or characters along the way found themselves in a similar position. The power gap was larger than ever before, which created a sense of obligation and a number of negative social pressures that the system had previously tried to minimize. In short: We\u2019re not at all happy with how this worked out.\r\rA common suggestion is to simply reduce the amount of Artifact Power required to fully unlock the artifact in 7.2. This would not solve the underlying problem, but would rather reduce its duration while heightening its intensity, as competitive players sprinted to finish their Artifacts in order to be \u201cready.\u201d But then we would inevitably tune around that completed power level, and other players would simply be playing catch-up the entire time. And in the long run, Artifact Power would not be serving its intended purpose of ongoing parallel progression. A capped-artifact player who goes a week without getting any item upgrades ends the week literally no stronger than before. Part of the value of the artifact, both for personal progression and guild progression, lies in ensuring that everyone is at least a bit stronger next week than they are right now, and a bit closer to overcoming whatever obstacle stands in their path. Our goal is for Artifact Power to always be of some interest as a reward, whether from a World Quest, or as a consolation prize when failing a bonus roll. \r\rInstead, we are focusing on fixing the mistake of flat cost scaling at the end of the progression, and instead keeping the increases exponential throughout, while also strengthening Artifact Knowledge as a core pacing and catch-up mechanism. These changes should be visible in an upcoming PTR build. \r\rThis is done with the primary goal of reducing the power gap based on time investment, while preserving Artifact Power as an endgame reward that everyone values. If the leaders in Artifact Power were only a few points ahead of a more typical player, rather than crossing the finish line when most were just leaving the starting blocks, players with less time to commit would not be as disadvantaged in competitive activities. If a Warlock were choosing between having 48 points in a single spec or 44 points in all three specs if they\u2019d split their efforts evenly, the barrier to playing multiple specs would be significantly reduced. We are still tuning the curve for 7.2 trait costs, but we\u2019re currently targeting scaling such that someone who earns twice as much AP as me will have an artifact that\u2019s only ~1.5% stronger; someone who earns four times as much AP as me should only be 3% stronger. On the whole, this should be a massive reduction in the power gaps we see in the live game today.\r\rThe second problem with our initial implementation was that repeatable sources of Artifact Power (Mythic Keystone dungeons in particular) dominated time-limited sources such as Emissary caches and raid bosses. The fact that a large portion of the community evaluates their Artifact Power needs using \u201cMaw runs\u201d as the unit of measurement is ample evidence of this failure. We very recently deployed a hotfix to increase AP earned from Nighthold in order to make raiding, with a weekly-lockout, better compare in efficiency to repeated Mythic Keystone runs. And in 7.2, we\u2019re more thoroughly addressing this issue by adding a significant amount of AP to the weekly Mythic Keystone cache, while somewhat reducing (and normalizing based on instance length) the AP awarded by repeated runs. These changes are being made to narrow the gap in AP earning, and thus power, based on time investment.\r\rAll of the above changes are aimed at allowing players the freedom and flexibility to decide how they want to spend their time, and which goals they wish to pursue, while limiting the difference in power between players who arrive at different answers to those questions.\r

Comentario de Awar

Comentario de inspersia

A very long post for them to essentially say they are making it more difficult.

Comentario de ossiferdown

on 2017-02-16T13:24:30-06:00

A very long post for them to essentially say they are making it more difficult.\r\rNot really sure I understand how that is. It might take longer but that's all I see. No need to do it all in a hurry.

Comentario de minduim0

on 2017-02-16T13:35:01-06:00

For some people, the hurry is the game.

Comentario de HolyPrincess

on 2017-02-16T13:42:16-06:00

I took it to mean oh hey you did a +10 grats here is 300,000 ap. Farmed 7 +7 keys? here is 200,000 total. They will be rewarding the single highest as you go, not the repeats. They also want you to do raids like NH and maybe go do some H-EN runs. they just dont want you the feel you HAVE to spam for hours on end.\r\rI get to play 6 hours a week outside the sleep i lose to raid on fri\/sat. I'm lucky to have my friends on and do 6 keys a week pushing 3 of our keys to between 10-13. They seem to think that I, as a casual feel hurt or sad im not at 54 traits yet because i cant farm mythic+ all dam day like some guys. \r\rI'm not sad, time = gear, its been that way forever, you put in the time you get better. I should not get to be heroic\/mythic tier'ed geared for my little time i play. Its not fair to the hard core players.\r\rThat being said my issue with Legion is the Mythic +7 LF Tank\/Heals at 905... dude its a 7 get over it, you want it to be an easy 3 chest get friends and do it, dont try and recruit the Avengers to take care of the 5th grade bully.

Comentario de Rankkor

on 2017-02-16T13:53:12-06:00

\r\rThat being said my issue with Legion is the Mythic +7 LF Tank\/Heals at 905... dude its a 7 get over it, you want it to be an easy 3 chest get friends and do it, dont try and recruit the Avengers to take care of the 5th grade bully.\r\rHA!!!\r\rLove that analogy :P I'd +1 your post if I could.

Comentario de moosecat11

on 2017-02-16T13:53:27-06:00

I'm not sure making it NOT exponential was a misstep. If they had, people would have just had to work harder (they're already complaining about having to work too hard), and people with more time on their hands would have still been increasing their artifacts and creating that power gap, while the rest of us hit a wall because we would not have possibly been able to farm that much AP. Anyway I'll read it more closely later but that is my initial feeling =\/

Comentario de gerakios

on 2017-02-16T13:56:32-06:00

I took it to mean oh hey you did a +10 grats here is 300,000 ap. Farmed 7 +7 keys? here is 200,000 total. They will be rewarding the single highest as you go, not the repeats. They also want you to do raids like NH and maybe go do some H-EN runs. they just dont want you the feel you HAVE to spam for hours on end.\r\rI get to play 6 hours a week outside the sleep i lose to raid on fri\/sat. I'm lucky to have my friends on and do 6 keys a week pushing 3 of our keys to between 10-13. They seem to think that I, as a casual feel hurt or sad im not at 54 traits yet because i cant farm mythic+ all dam day like some guys. \r\rI'm not sad, time = gear, its been that way forever, you put in the time you get better. I should not get to be heroic\/mythic tier'ed geared for my little time i play. Its not fair to the hard core players.\r\rThat being said my issue with Legion is the Mythic +7 LF Tank\/Heals at 905... dude its a 7 get over it, you want it to be an easy 3 chest get friends and do it, dont try and recruit the Avengers to take care of the 5th grade bully.\r\rThey're not saying that you should feel bad\/sad about this situation. They're saying that they are unhappy that you are so far behind. They're saying that their intent was for you to be P% behind, based on how many hours played. But instead, you're actually Q% behind and Q >> P. The intended solution is to make Q much closer to P.

Comentario de Romanthony

on 2017-02-16T14:26:32-06:00

and when you farmed out a max artifact time to do it on your alts, and when you done it on them, time to throw the fully buffed amazing artifact away for the next expansion xP

Comentario de serangel

on 2017-02-16T14:26:42-06:00

offered max-level progression that was not entirely item-driven, along with choices and elements of character customization as players traversed their trait trees; second, it was meant to serve as a universally desired, consistent reward from all types of content.\r\rthey missed two missteps! \r\r1. Its not progression its an artificial wall based on grinding. offers no customization. \r2. its not a reward its a chore. \r\rif you wanted this to really work story to get a powers over time would have been nice. get behind? go do the quest till you catch up. \rCutting edge spend 20-30 mins on the new weekly or bi weekly content for your next power on tuesday. \r\ryou made something universally hated grats - oh and thank you for making it so much worse. best part of the system was that to pargon was no exponential like the rest of the dumb weapon system.

Comentario de jjanchan

on 2017-02-16T14:32:01-06:00

I don't get it Bliz...\rYea sure if you change to AP cost to exponential then hardcore raider will only be several level of final trait higher then others, but what if I've decided to change spec somewhat later? I got a level 1 final trait, and the cost to upgrade is exponential!\r\rSo you're just basically telling everybody "if you choose the wrong spec, congrats, you can quit now!"\r\rEssentially if you decide to change specs, with the new with knowledge levels you should be able to get within a few traits of your "main" spec with relative ease. Getting those last few traits will take awhile, but they won't make or break your gameplay.\r\rI think it's a pretty elegant solution to the issue, although I think getting those last few traits will feel pretty grindy.

Comentario de darkrunedk

on 2017-02-16T14:38:46-06:00

That being said my issue with Legion is the Mythic +7 LF Tank\/Heals at 905... dude its a 7 get over it, you want it to be an easy 3 chest get friends and do it, dont try and recruit the Avengers to take care of the 5th grade bully.

HA!

Love that analogy :P I'd +1 your post if I could.

I would give it +1 too if I could :-)

Comentario de rudysan

on 2017-02-16T15:00:38-06:00

Applaud.

Comentario de alqtrkappa

on 2017-02-16T15:13:57-06:00

I'm thinking exponential costs on paragon will help out everyone who plays more than 1 spec. I have 3 toons at max level but I mainly play one. And that one I keep Blood and Frost pretty much even in power. It feels pretty bad knowing that if I just focused on one spec I would be at 54 traits already, but I keep the two even because I'm asked to do both from raid leaders and my m+ group. I'm doing at least 8% less damage to friends who play about as much as me because I need two ready to go specs. But if it were only 3% I wouldn't feel like I'm losing out just because I need to keep two spec ready.\r\rI would honestly like to play all my toons, but I feel like I'm losing out on my main. My guess is that all the world first people would rather max out their artifact quickly on every toon they play, but if it is easier to keep all your toons of the same power level and only be marginally behind someone who only plays one toon that would feel better. I imagine it would suck having to go from a toon with 54 traits to one with 44 because that spec is better for the fight. It wouldn't feel great knowing that a spec isn't as powerful as it possibly could be, but having a smaller gap between two specs or toons is probably a worthy trade off.

Comentario de HolyPrincess

on 2017-02-16T15:21:52-06:00

\r\rThat being said my issue with Legion is the Mythic +7 LF Tank\/Heals at 905... dude its a 7 get over it, you want it to be an easy 3 chest get friends and do it, dont try and recruit the Avengers to take care of the 5th grade bully.\r\rHA!\r\rLove that analogy :P I'd +1 your post if I could.\r\rI would give it +1 too if I could :-)\r\r\rhaha thanks guys, i try

Comentario de HolyPrincess

on 2017-02-16T15:23:11-06:00

I took it to mean oh hey you did a +10 grats here is 300,000 ap. Farmed 7 +7 keys? here is 200,000 total. They will be rewarding the single highest as you go, not the repeats. They also want you to do raids like NH and maybe go do some H-EN runs. they just dont want you the feel you HAVE to spam for hours on end.\r\rI get to play 6 hours a week outside the sleep i lose to raid on fri\/sat. I'm lucky to have my friends on and do 6 keys a week pushing 3 of our keys to between 10-13. They seem to think that I, as a casual feel hurt or sad im not at 54 traits yet because i cant farm mythic+ all dam day like some guys. \r\rI'm not sad, time = gear, its been that way forever, you put in the time you get better. I should not get to be heroic\/mythic tier'ed geared for my little time i play. Its not fair to the hard core players.\r\rThat being said my issue with Legion is the Mythic +7 LF Tank\/Heals at 905... dude its a 7 get over it, you want it to be an easy 3 chest get friends and do it, dont try and recruit the Avengers to take care of the 5th grade bully.\r\rThey're not saying that you should feel bad\/sad about this situation. They're saying that they are unhappy that you are so far behind. They're saying that their intent was for you to be P% behind, based on how many hours played. But instead, you're actually Q% behind and Q >> P. The intended solution is to make Q much closer to P.\r\r\rAhh ok, well crap what did they expect with would happen with a farm-able way to increase your character % at a time...did they learn nothing the past decade?

Comentario de AKPlayer

on 2017-02-16T15:30:31-06:00

I agree with the approach giving more AP for longer dungeons. Was pretty stupid we have to farm a specific "easier" dungeon to get the AP needed. I hope those in Emissary boxes are VERY LARGE and those in weekly Chest are Trump "HUGE" because they are both one time events and should have more than a dungeon we can farm the crap out of today.

Let me put it into a different approach. Dungeons being MASS repeatable should be a fraction of once a week lockouts. (Daily Chest = 1\/2 million AP @AK25 and Weekly Mythic = 1 million AP @AK25) BUT... dungeons award 100k AP @AK25 per boss\/chest inside Dungeon only) - I also think the AP on World Boss should 100% drop and remove the gold completely. Boss inside the NH raid should be the same way. Yesterday it was 190k @AK25, but last week's boss was GOLD - really? Everyone just skipped that boss as it wasn't worth the headache in raid. (Gold? Seriously?)

Comentario de DarklingThrush

on 2017-02-16T15:48:11-06:00

A very long post for them to essentially say they are making it more difficult.\r\rI don't think that's what they said. They said they want to keep it as a way to always progress our characters, without it being as punishing for those who can't play 40hrs per week.

Comentario de overthinker

on 2017-02-16T16:05:01-06:00

I thought the whole thing with Legion was that for every like 10 ilv it was only supposed to be like 0.01% difference in DPS charts. My hunter in all lfr gear is still about middle of dps charts and I only do the 4 WQ per day, 1st heroic dungeon and lfr.

Comentario de breckdog

on 2017-02-16T16:17:07-06:00

Sounded like they were saying that they did not like how a portion of the player base capped at 54 at end of emerald nightmare. The fix was to make it harder to cap which also makes it harder on all the rest of the player base because a small portion of the community got ahead. The portion of the player base that got all 54 points already is still going to be ahead no matter what system is implemented. The increase will simply make it harder overall thus increasing the disparity.